ing in that
line,--unless, indeed, he wrote Romeo and Juliet' and the 'Sonnets;' but
if he has, I don't believe they differ so very much from those of his
valet or his groom to their respective lady-loves. It is always, My
darling! my darling! The words of endearment are the only ones the lover
wants to employ, and he finds the vocabulary too limited for his vast
desires. So his letters are apt to be rather tedious except to the
personage to whom they are addressed. As to poetry, it is very common to
find it in love-letters, especially in those that have no love in them.
The letters of bigamists and polygamists are rich in poetical extracts.
Occasionally, an original spurt in rhyme adds variety to an otherwise
monotonous performance. I don't think there is much passion in men's
poetry addressed to women. I agree with The Dictator that poetry is
little more than the ashes of passion; still it may show that the flame
has had its sweep where you find it, unless, indeed, it is shoveled in
from another man's fireplace."

"What do you say to the love poetry of women?" asked the Professor. "Did
ever passion heat words to incandescence as it did those of Sappho?"

The Counsellor turned,--not to Number Five, as he ought to have done,
according to my programme, but to the Mistress.

"Madam," he said, "your sex is adorable in many ways, but in the abandon
of a genuine love-letter it is incomparable. I have seen a string of
women's love-letters, in which the creature enlaced herself about the
object of her worship as that South American parasite which clasps the
tree to which it has attached itself, begins with a slender succulent
network, feeds on the trunk, spreads its fingers out to hold firmly
to one branch after another, thickens, hardens, stretches in every
direction, following the boughs,--and at length gets strong enough to
hold in its murderous arms, high up in air, the stump and shaft of the
once sturdy growth that was its support and subsistence."

The Counsellor did not say all this quite so formally as I have set it
down here, but in a much easier way. In fact, it is impossible to smooth
out a conversation from memory without stiffening it; you can't have a
dress shirt look quite right without starching the bosom.

Some of us would have liked to hear more about those letters in the
divorce cases, but the Counsellor had to leave the table. He promised to
show us some pictures he has of the South American parasite. I